Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Pesqueira and David Gonzalez, who also acts as the player’s agent, are now involved in a potentially historic lawsuit against Major League Baseball that could change the signing system for Mexican players and complicate efforts for a worldwide draft. At the crux of the fight is whether Pesqueira was willfully aware that he finalized a contract with the Diablos Rojos, or if he and his father were tricked into signing away his free-agent rights—or if the young player had ever even signed a contract in the first place.

When MLB ruled in favor of the Diablos Rojos, thereby denying Pesqueira his right to free agency, it became embroiled in the controversy.

Currently, Mexican players are usually signed through negotiations with teams from the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol (LMB), which own the rights of the majority of signing-eligible players. If an MLB team wants a player, it buys him from the Mexican team, which then pockets a majority of the bonus. It’s a profitable business for those teams. But Pesqueira believes that he never signed a legitimate contract with Mexico City.

Should Gonzalez win the lawsuit, or settle with MLB, it may create a precedent through which many other youth professional contracts from Mexico—signed or fabricated, depending on who you believe, under the same circumstances that Pesqueira claims—are also invalidated, creating a slew of free agents and leading to a situation similar to those in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. If there is any question as to who owns the rights of hundreds of Mexican players, or if Pesqueira’s lawsuit drags on for several months, or even a year, then it could be tricky for any kind of worldwide draft to be implemented anytime soon.

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